Black Atlantic

by Peter J Evans

  The whole team was on the platform now. Walkways connected the disc fore and aft to bridges stretching clear across the width of the hull, and they in turn led to more platforms with railings ranged around the chamber's outer edge. Occasionally, ladders ran down to the lowest deck. Bane hoped she'd be able to stay on the walkways. The idea of being level with a sumpful of darkwater didn't appeal to her in the slightest.

  Dredd was gesturing at the bow. He probably wanted to start a sweep there and flush the Warchild out towards the stairs. All the better, Bane thought to herself. If they drove it out of the blockhouse it would run into multiple weapons fire from the skipper's men.

  She was just wondering how, if they didn't find the creature, they could get up the stairs and out without being shot themselves, when she saw the Warchild.

  She froze, trying desperately not to scream. The others hadn't seen it.

  Instantly she realised why. It was still camouflaged, its skin perfectly mimicking the clean grey walls of the Kraken's interior. It was only because her eyes were different from theirs that she could see it at all, and then it was only an outline.

  It was crouched on one of the bridges, near the control boards. Its posture was loose, relaxed; hunched on the mesh with one hand on the railing, the other arm dangling. She couldn't see any details - no eyes, or teeth, or whatever it used to open people up so efficiently - but its head was slightly to one side.

  The Warchild was watching them. And Dredd was walking right towards it.

  Bane knew that it could hear her. By now, it was probably smart enough to understand what she said, and if she just screamed and pointed it would be on them, or away, before they could do anything about it.

  "I spy," she whispered, "with my little mutant eye, something beginning with Hellermann..."

  To his credit, Dredd didn't alter his pace or make any physical sign he'd heard her. "Where?" he hissed.

  "Two bridges forward, near the centre." Bane forced herself to look somewhere else entirely. "Watching us, real close."

  "You're sure?" Vix said. "I don't see it."

  "Advantage of being a filthy mutant, skull-head."

  "Stow it," Dredd replied. "We've only got one chance at this. Hi-ex. On my mark, cover the bridge."

  There was the soft, metallic sound of four Lawgivers having their ammo loads manually reconfigured. Bane knew the guns could understand voices, but if the creature could too...

  The Warchild was on its feet. Dredd brought his Lawgiver up and said: "Mark."

  The bridge flew apart in a cloud of fire and whirling metal.

  The racket of the Lawgivers going off was hellish. Bane was crouching, hands over her ears, feeling hot shell casings hit her in the back. For a moment she thought the Warchild was gone, that it must have been shredded in the multiple blasts, but then the closest bridge to her shuddered under a sudden weight.

  The Warchild had jumped out of the explosion and landed on the bridge, only metres away.

  Bane saw it for a fraction of a second before it leapt again, too brief an instant to react to but enough to form a picture in her mind that would stay there forever. The Warchild, standing, its camouflage bleaching out into bone-white skin, lipless mouth frozen into a razor-sharp snarl. One of its arms had grown a long blade, extending a metre forward of its hand. The other was a shattered twist of flesh and broken armour.

  Before she could even draw breath it had jumped again. It came down on the walkway between her and Dredd.

  And it moved. Later, Bane would realise that the Warchild wasn't impossibly fast, even though it was quicker than she could ever hope to be. But it moved so fluidly, almost ballet-like in motion, as though unfettered by mass or gravity. Every separate part of it seemed to be doing something different at once, even the smashed arm, as though it had already adapted to the loss. It was like a master swordsman and an expert dancer rolled into one.

  The remaining arm-blade sang out in a wide arc, taking Larson's head off without trying. At the same moment Dredd's Lawgiver had been kicked from his hand and another foot had slammed into the small of his back. The blade whipped around on the backswing to find Vix's belly, but Bane had moved too, launching herself up and back, powering into the woman at waist level. The blade corrected in mid-flight and carved a track across Vix's ribcage.

  The broken arm belted Bane across the face, exactly where Dredd had struck her. Pain erupted through her skull and she tumbled back onto the mesh. Vaguely, she heard Peyton yelling that he couldn't get a clear shot.

  The Warchild snapped round, its sword-arm poised to skewer her, and took Dredd's fist right in the teeth.

  Its head rocked back under a blow that would have sheared the vertebrae of any human. Bane heard the impact and kicked blindly out at the Warchild's legs, and must have actually connected by pure luck. Unbalanced, the creature found itself being hammered by the reinforced knuckles of Mega-City One's finest fist.

  Behind it, Judge Larson's body dropped to its knees. The fountain of blood from its severed neck hadn't even had a chance to slow. His heart didn't realise it was dead yet.

  The Warchild darted away and Dredd's next blow hissed past. The blade came up, but the creature must have been affected by the punches, because it left Dredd enough time to leap forward and grab the bioweapon's remaining arm.

  Bane scrabbled away from them, beyond all terror now, seeing the bone-white sword whipping left and right in Dredd's grip. The lawman's other hand was wrapped around its throat, trying to crush the life out of it.

  Bane watched incredulously. Dredd was actually gaining the upper hand. The Warchild, for all its insect grace and speed and impossible strength, couldn't break his grip.

  The sword twisted down and up, scooping out a half-metre of railing. Bane saw the piece of metal bar spin away, and in a moment of awful clarity realised what the creature was going to do. "Dredd!" she howled. "It's trying to take you down!"

  It was already too late. The Warchild had bent back and to the right with inhuman flexibility, its torso curving almost completely around on itself. Before Dredd could react the creature's right leg folded, sending the pair of them tumbling through the gap in the railing.

  Dredd couldn't let go of the Warchild's arm or throat. He went over without a sound.

  There was a second of silence and then the ghastly cracking of two bodies, one human and one not nearly so, colliding with the metal grille over the sump.

  Her head pounding, Bane rolled over and looked down through the mesh. Dredd couldn't have survived a fall like that. She wondered if the Warchild had.

  Her vision was blurry from pain. She blinked rapidly, her extra eyelids sweeping away tears and blood, and when her eyes cleared she saw that neither Dredd nor the Warchild was lying dead on the grille.

  The metal had given way when they had struck it. They were in the sump.

  14. SHIVERS

  Mako Quint's office was full of people, more full than it had been for years. From his position behind the desk, all the skipper could see was faces. Some of them were angry. All of them were frightened.

  The faces belonged to local councillors, minor officials who ran the affairs of small areas of Sargasso - sometimes four or five ships, sometimes just one. Usually they kept themselves to themselves, but in times of need they would report back to Quint, or even the ruling council.

  There were twenty of them packed into the office, which represented about a quarter of the entire city.

  "I've never seen anything spread so fast," Lorton Umax was telling him. Umax was councillor for a small group of vessels that included the Pride of Macao, and he'd been down in the underdeck habs not long before. The rest of the councillors were trying to give him a lot of personal space.

  "I'm not sure what the vector is," Umax went on. "In a place like the Macao it could be anything. Skin contact, droplet... Grud, it could even be airborne."

  A woman next to him - Quint recognised her as councillor for the Elektra Maru - practically jumped. "
Airborne? Skipper, we need to shut down their ventilation. What if plague germs come out and blow across the deck?" She glared at Umax. "Everything windward and astern of the Macao could take them in!"

  "If you shut down the ventilation, the Macao will be dead in a day!"

  "Better that than the whole city!"

  "Calm down, Borla." Quint raised his hands in an attempt to soothe the woman of her fears. "No one's shutting down any vents. And I've never met a bug yet that could survive Black Atlantic air."

  "It's not just that," said Umax. "Some of the skipper's men won't come down on patrol. They say they're being diverted away from normal duties, something to do with this Warbeast."

  "Warchild."

  "Whatever. We've got a crime increase down there, a big one. If it carries on like this we'll have a riot and people really will die."

  Quint had taken more than enough of this. He got up, his hands flat on the desk, using his massive height to lean over them. "Councillors, I hear your concerns. And I understand that the situation on board the Macao is serious." He raised his hand again to stem a rising babble of voices. "Please! I'll double patrols in the Macao to keep order and help where they can. I've got Philo Jennig calling me every ten minutes, regardless, and I've stepped up the delivery of reports. I'll know what happens, when it happens."

  "But skipper-"

  Quint raised a finger at Borla, halting her in mid-sentence. "This disease is not fatal, but it is infectious. We need time for the doctors to determine the best treatment for those who are ill, and they need space in which to work. So I've sent skipper's men to the Venturer. They're moving the occupants away and setting it up as a hospital.

  "We've been through this before," he continued. "We came through it then, and we will today. But I need your help. Stay calm, keep your people calm, try to carry on as normally as possible."

  He straightened, raising himself to his full height. "Oh, and councillors? One more thing. If I hear anyone, and I mean anyone, use the word 'plague' outside this office, they'll find themselves changing blankets in the Macao in damn short order. Clear?"

  As they filed out, Quint sank back into his chair. He moved a file on his desk, one that had been covering up the last two reports to come in. He couldn't let any of the councillors see what he had just read.

  The first report had told him of the plague's first fatality. An old woman, in her nineties, had slipped into a coma and died not half an hour before. The eldsters were always the first to go, Quint reflected. Then the children would begin to die. When adults started to succumb, the first victims would be the parents of the dead children and the relatives of the eldsters.

  The second report was worse. Far worse. Four victims had just been confirmed on the Horizon Hope, two ships to port.

  The disease was already off the Pride of Macao.

  The Warchild was gone.

  Dredd had kept his grip on the bioweapon all the way down. As he felt himself toppling off the walkway he'd made a snap decision, not trusting the fall alone to kill it. He could have freed a hand in time to grab the walkway and hang on, but he'd gambled that he could do more damage to the Warchild by making sure it hit the deck just before he did.

  He hadn't gambled on the sump grille giving way under him.

  The darkwater Bane had told him about was hot and foul, thick as phlegm on the surface but watery beneath. When the Warchild hit, the impact had been so great Dredd had almost lost consciousness; and for a second, when the blackness swooped up to envelop him, he thought that he had. But it only took a second to realise he'd gone through the grille and into the sump. The darkwater had blinded him.

  The thick surface layer hid something else about the sump. It had a current.

  There must have been a pump forcing the stuff back towards the stern, probably to be filtered and recycled. As soon as they had gone under, the Warchild was torn from his grasp, ripped away by the undertow. His hands abruptly free, Dredd had managed to grab something and hold on, his legs trailing in the vicious current. With his other hand he reached up to the front of his helmet and slid his respirator down over his nose and mouth.

  The respirator wouldn't let him breathe under water, or under darkwater, for that matter. It was purely an air filter. But in the absence of air it formed a perfect seal over his nose and mouth, keeping the toxic stuff from getting into his lungs. Dredd could hold his breath for a long time and the respirator would give him a vital few minutes.

  He couldn't tell where he was in the sump.

  He wasn't even sure which way was up. The hot liquid was rushing past him so fast that it was robbing him of all sense of gravity. He wasn't sure if the object he had grabbed was a dangling part of a grille, and thus near the sump's surface, or whether it was something sticking out of the side. He was sure he hadn't gone down as far as the bottom of the sump, but no matter how he moved his free arm he couldn't feel the surface. And, bionic eyes or not, he couldn't see a thing in the darkwater.

  It was getting hard to think. He'd not been able to take a full breath before he'd gone under the surface. How long had he been down here? The stench of the darkwater was getting through the respirator, a sickening chemical reek.

  The situation was getting desperate. He reached down to his belt to see if there was something there he could use. Perhaps if he dropped a grenade into the current it would destroy whatever pump was trying to tear him away. But did he have any grenades? He was no longer sure, and the darkwater was starting to burn his skin.

  Something grabbed at his collar.

  He twisted away and tried to reach down for his boot knife. The Warchild must have beaten the current and come back for him. But before he could get his hand down as far as his ankle he was wrenched free of the handhold. And pulled up through the gluey black surface of the darkwater.

  He shook his head violently, feeling the slimy liquid drooling off his face and away from his eyes. When he opened them he saw Gethsemane Bane in the sump with him, her hair plastered to her scalp, skin black with darkwater residue. She had a hold of his collar in one hand and part of the broken grille in the other.

  Dredd grabbed the grille and held on, then used his other hand to push his respirator back up and out of the way. He dragged in a breath.

  His thoughts cleared. "Nice work," he told Bane. "You can see under that drek?"

  "A bit." She blinked, three sets of eyelids clearing the muck from her eyes. "Where is it?"

  "Gone. Current took it."

  "Think it's dead?"

  Dredd's lip twisted. "Not a chance." He got a good grip on the grille and hauled himself up, then reached down to pull Bane out of the stuff too.

  "Thanks." She fell back onto the deck and stayed sitting there for a moment. "Larson's dead."

  "I saw. Vix too."

  She shook her head. "Skull-head's still alive. Cut up, but I think she'll live. Peyton's spraying stuff on her."

  By the time Dredd had climbed back up the ladder and retrieved his Lawgiver from the walkway, Peyton had finished spraying and started bandaging. Vix was slumped against the walkway railing, her helmet on the mesh next to her. There was a deep cut in her torso, starting from her left armpit and stretching diagonally down to just under her sternum. Blood had soaked her uniform and Dredd caught a glimpse of white bone in the wound before Peyton covered it with a compression bandage.

  She was, however, alive. Her eyes opened as she heard him approach and rolled towards him. "Sorry," she croaked.

  "Save your strength," he told her. "You'll need it to get back up those stairs."

  She gave a tiny, pained nod. Her face was paper white and her sandy hair was glued into rough spikes by sweat and grime. Dredd realised he'd never seen her without the helmet. She was a lot younger than he'd thought.

  He couldn't resist one dig. "Looks like you owe Bane twice."

  A weak smile spread over Vix's face and she chuckled, wincing. "Looks like I do."

  Dredd moved past her to where Judge Larson had
fallen. His body was sprawled over the mesh, the metal around it dripping crimson. His helmet lay a few metres away with his head still in it.

  "Another street Judge down," Dredd grated.

  "He died doing his job," Bane said quietly. "Doesn't that mean something?"

  "Not enough." He walked back to the circular platform, and pointed down to the sump. "There's a current down there - some kind of pumping system. Know where it leads?"

  "Not really. Sternwards, something to do with the coolant. There might be a vent out to open sea, but I'm guessing." She moved closer. "Dredd, we have to go back. Vix is badly hurt and there's no way we can search for the Warchild down in the sump, even if it is still there. It might be at the bottom of the Atlantic by now."

  "You said you could see down there."

  "See, yes. Survive, no." She spread her hands. "Dredd, we've got to fall back. At least talk to someone who knows the layout of the sump system, and get Vix to a medic."

  Dredd didn't like it, but she was right. Hellermann's creation had slipped out of his grasp again, in more ways than one. Still, it was injured now. Dredd didn't know how fast it would heal, but even if it was able to self-repair at high speed, nothing could just regrow an arm.

  That gave him an advantage. For a while. He just needed to know where it would end up.

  Bane went up the stairs first, shouting a brief conversation with the skipper's men still on deck. When she'd convinced them that she wasn't actually the Warchild in disguise she helped Peyton carry Vix out.

  Dredd didn't like having to leave Larson's body on the walkway, but that was part of the job. A fallen Judge was always treated with respect, but not at the cost of the case in hand. And Dredd had a monster to catch.

  Monster. In a way that was the right word because the Warchild did things that were monstrous. But to call it that was to underestimate it. Dredd had tracked killers before, more than he could count. Seldom had he been on the trail of one so resourceful, so adaptable and dedicated.

  Hellermann had wanted an army of these things doing Judges' work. If Vix was right, certain elements of Tek Division still wanted the same thing.